A Mental Strength Coach is Born

In the spring of 1984, my world was rocked during the course of an 800 meter race. Having plans to transfer to New York University in the fall, I knew that I would run for the last time as a University of Delaware Fighting Blue Hen. I was an average but consistent mid-distance runner for UD knowing deep down in my 20-year old body that I had underperformed my entire career.

Feeling somewhat melancholy before the race that day, I separated myself from my teammates. I thought about the upcoming foot surgery that would end my college track career. I reflected on my past wins and losses and I firmly committed myself to running my fastest time or setting a “PR”, Personal Record in this, my last race. I repeated over and over, “personal record”. I knew that had nothing to lose. Little did I know that I was clearing my mind with my very own made-up mantra.

I stepped onto the starting line that day in an unusually calm state. In other words, I didn’t feel that normal throw up feeling. The gun shot and off I went. Funny, I didn’t feel my legs burn and I didn’t hear that voice of doubt in my mind. I remember passing UD’s best mid-distance runner. That is when my one and only thought came into my mind. I thought, “Man, she must be having a bad day.” 

Having crossed the finish line in third place, my teammates jumped on me. They celebrated because I had shaved 5 seconds off of my PR. 5 SECONDS! That is HUGE in the 800 meters. I set a PR that I had never dreamed of.

Elated for a minute, I quickly sunk into disappointment. Thoughts flooded my mind. Why couldn’t I have done this sooner? How could I have waited until my last race to tap into my speed? How could I have allowed doubt and fear to block my potential for 6 years?

It was on that day that I began my quest to study the mind and how to use it in sports. It was years after that race that I found the practices of yoga and meditation I knew right away that I had found my mental training tools. I now consider myself a Mental Strength Coach. I am committed to helping athletes learn how to use their minds in order to tap into their speed, power and potential and not wait, like I did, until their last race or game to figure it out. 

Cara Bradley

Deeper understanding of a Banged up Jock

Eight years ago, when I committed to Hatha Yoga as a practice, I was in a fair amount of pain. The pain was not caused by running, ice hockey or weight lifting. The pain was caused by an imbalanced body. No matter what I did, I was experiencing some level of pain by just moving my body. Imagine the structure of your body as the tires on your car. If the alignment of your car is poor, your tires will wear out faster in certain areas. From a performance standpoint, the car will also not drive to its capability. Eventually the misalignment will not only affect the life of the tires, but also the brakes and other elements that make up your car.

My body was not aligned properly. It stemmed back to an injury I incurred as a youth. I went on a roller coaster 10 times in a row. I was such a snapper-head as a kid! I was a skinny runt and was thrown around in the Salt and Pepper Shakers having a blast. Well, the next day I could not walk and wound up in the hospital with doctor after doctor coming in to try and put the pieces together. Eventually I was discharged and sent to Physical Therapy. I woke up one morning shortly after starting Physical therapy and it was a miracle. I could walk. I was healed—not really.

Imprints are left on the body and mind that hold accidents and other traumas within our structure. The fascia is where these injuries are stored. It can take years for them to resurface as pain. This leaves us scratching our heads wondering why we have pain. In my case, the impact came from the left side leaving the fascia on the left side rolling inward while the fascia on the right side rolled outward. The easiest way to see this within my body was to watch how I stood, walked and ran. The left leg turned in and the right outward. Neither I, nor anyone else in my life ever noticed it. It was subtle and not noticeable unless you were really looking at my walking gait.

I didn’t notice it during my first two years of practicing Hatha Yoga. I remember the day I started becoming aware of the patterns in my legs. It was still another two years before I pieced together the childhood accident with the imbalances. As my awareness of my body and mind grew, I began working with my feet and retraining my legs to be balanced so they were not being held inward or outward—just neutral. As I worked with my legs, it was amazing how my hips, spinal column, and shoulders changed. Over the past 8 years, I have felt first hand within my body how interconnected everything truly is. Neck pain does come from the feet, hip pain from the shoulder and knee pain from the lower back.

About a year ago I began running again and lifting weights pain free. I have a lot of friends who are orthopedic doctors, and runners are keeping these doctors in business. Running is getting a bad rap. Running is not the problem. Running on an imbalanced structure is the problem. Presently everyone is dealing with a story like mine or imbalances that are slowly creating problems. Think about incorporating some yoga into your life. It will allow you to keep enjoying the things you love to do for the rest of your life.

Pulley System

The easiest way to see how the human body moves is to extend your arm straight out in front of you. Bend your elbow making a muscle with your bicep. The bicep shortens while the muscle on the back of the arm (triceps) lengthens. Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an opposite and equal reaction. This law is very evident in the human body. When one muscle shortens, another muscle lengthens. This circular relationship can be viewed as a chain.

Examples of chains in the human body are: Bicep/Triceps, Quadriceps/Hamstrings, Hip Flexors/ Gluteus (butt muscles). There are many more, but I’m sure you get the picture. So what happens to the functionality of a chain when one of the muscles is tight? According to Newton’s law, if one side tightens short—the other side tightens long. This is called “Locked Short and Locked Long”. When this happens the chain has fallen into a state of dysfunction.

The energetic relationship within a chain can be thought of as a wheel. A functional chain is energetically symmetrical while a dysfunctional chain is asymmetrical. The qualities of a symmetrical chain are like that of a symmetrical wheel: it spins fast, requires less energy to move and will have a longer life due to its balanced nature. Now let’s look at a chain that is locked short on one side and locked long on the other. The qualities of an asymmetrical wheel: it cannot spin as fast as the symmetrical wheel, requires more energy to get moving and stay moving, and due to its imbalanced nature, will experience a much shorter life.

Built Backwards (more from Balanced Athlete book)

I grew up like many other American kids. My dad was an enthusiastic parent who wanted me to be involved in sports. I willingly accepted my dad’s desires. The challenge of sports always got my attention, and I was passionate about practice. Around the age of twelve, my track coach introduced me to weight training. He said it would increase my speed and overall performance. Like many teenage boys at that time, I began lifting weights in my basement.

Not much information was available about strength and conditioning. Nor were there many gyms around, so I just read bodybuilding magazines and followed the routines. I trained muscles not movements, which is the blind side of many athletes. Once I got into high school, I began lifting weights in my school gym where there was no guidance or instruction. I looked at the biggest guys and followed whatever program and technique they were using. The ego was always the motivating factor in the weight room. Push as much weight as you could and be the strongest. Intimidating muscles was the goal. What makes weight training and conditioning so very powerful is what makes it so very dangerous. When an athlete starts lifting weights without any supervision or education on technique and program design, the results can be threatening now, yet the true danger lies in the future. Many times training mistakes show themselves later in life when you scratch your head wondering where this pain or that injury came from. When I was young there was little awareness concerning gym safety and this continues to be a BIG PROBLEM today. This statement is a call to action to all parents out there. If your kids are lifting weights and training, make sure they are receiving proper education from a trained Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Resources can be found on www.nsca-lift.org

The next Blog I will finally get back to the health of the pulley system

My response (excerpt from Balanced Athlete book)

For many athletes this would have been their first and last yoga experience. I mean who wants to do something they are not good at? Who wants to do something that exposes their weaknesses? For me, I have no choice. My running is hurting me, and I need to find out why. I had heard some hype about yoga, and while weight training and traditional strength and conditioning are all about developing strong muscles that contract inward, yoga works on balancing those actions with extending muscles outward. I checked yoga out, but ended up defeated and exhausted and decided that yoga was not for me. That quickly changed the following day when I woke up after that class.

To my surprise, my lower back was not as sore as previous mornings. I noticed my joints were less achy. All of this from one yoga class! I reconsidered. Maybe this was what I needed after all. The relief motivated me to return to class, yet this time was different. I performed better. I saw progress in just two classes. I did not like yoga in the beginning, but as I continued to show up for class, my body began feeling stronger. You heard me right STRONGER! My range of motion improved quickly and I began studying the movements through the lens of a strength and conditioning professional, realizing the potential this exercise modality could provide the athlete.

People think yoga is some sissy exercise. There are thousands of styles of yoga. The physical branch on the all encompassing Yoga Tree is called Hatha Yoga which literally translates as the yoga of force. Classically those who practiced Hatha yoga and the path they followed were more comparable to the Marine Core. It was not for the faint of heart— or for those afraid of hard work. It was all about discipline. I took my first Yoga class in 1995 and came in and out of yoga for 5 years. It was not until I felt like the athlete within me was being challenge did I respond.

Banged up Jock!

I am working on the Blog entry about the health of the pulleys yet for now here is something I wrote for the Balanced Athlete book (not yet published).

Sitting on the edge of my bed early one morning, I look over at my running shoes and realize my long love affair seems to be coming to an end. The fading allure is reflective of living with a chronically sore lower back and painful joints. I love to run, throw iron around in the gym and chase a hockey puck across the ice; yet ironically I know deep down inside that I’m inflicting permanent damage by doing what I love. You got it. I am a Banged up Jock, and today frustration won. I decide I can not continue without a change. Little do I know that my life and career are about to take a radical turn.

As I walk into the yoga room later that morning, I am immediately reminded of the locker-room feeling during my ice hockey days. The smell, the unnerving pre-game silence and the focus of those warming up. Once the class begins, it takes all of five minutes before sweat is dripping onto my mat, my heart is pounding and my muscles are firing in ways I have never before experienced—my stereotypically held notion of yoga as simply being deep relaxation and gentle stretching melts away as I confront my first yoga class.

When I have trouble straightening my arms over my head I want to scream, “Can anyone bench over 300 pounds?” Bending over I have trouble even coming close to touching my toes, but I want to yell out to everyone, “I can squat over 400 pounds.” My ego is screaming. I keep asking myself, why can't I do this? We move our bodies standing, balancing, kneeling, lying on our bellies, lying on our backs and in sitting position. We work the spine in ways that immediately redefine core strength. I continually look around the room trying to mimic what many appear to be doing with ease and grace. It is humbling, borderline humiliating. My eyes scan the room for a clock, wanting this feeling of defeat and embarrassment to go away.

At the end of class, we lie back in a final resting position called Corpse pose. I just experienced the hardest workout of my life. Lying in corpse pose is appropriate. I feel like dying. I am physically exhausted and mentally bankrupt. I thought yoga would be another notch in my belt, instead I lie here a broken athlete, yoga having exposed all of my weaknesses. How am I going to respond?